Synopsys

For businesses and individuals to optimize their use of AI in a very human way, they must take a step back and apply Lean thinking by looking at the ontological factors that humans depend upon in order to live - which means to adapt, reproduce, and energize — and then lead with AI to optimize those ontological factors with the least waste better than any competitors or alternative approaches. This is the key point of Lean applied to AI: thinking through and beyond prompts to guide AI in uniquely human ways toward outcomes that move people upward along a value curve that we all pursue — toward further and better being, and toward what we speculate may be beyond what is known.

Leanism calls this universal value curve the "ontologoical teleology," which is the innate objective of further being and becoming better — a condition we have been unwittingly thrust into since birth. Darwinism is a specific, biological example of the ontological teleology. The overall goal of the ontological teleology is both self-defining within the universe (the "ontological medium"), and possibly for something beyond existence based upon what some people may believe exists without common agreement, such as a religion.

If we bracket out speculation with this mental lense, we can see the ontological teleology most clearly across all gradations of life and existence. Existence along these gradations forms degrees of lean, true value. This lean value can be broken down three ways into that which is "universal," "process," or "personal" in nature. Life is created at the point that the universal and process values successfully interact and adapt within the universe to perpetually energize and reproduce. Cognitive and conscious organisms develop a personal type of lean, true value—including the uniquely human capacity to perceive meaning, exercise judgment, and lead machines toward purposeful ends. The mixing of these three value types across the gradations thus creates levels of existence that lean up on top of one another, from raw matter to microorganisms, human beings, corporations, and now AI systems that humans must lead to serve the ontological teleology forever onward and upward until the next system imposes itself ontop of AI.

Unlike humans, AI cannot perceive or pursue the ontological teleology on its own. It cannot speculate about what may lie beyond existence, cannot understand the search for meaning that influences human action, and cannot independently determine what constitutes genuine value versus mere output. This is where human leadership becomes irreplaceable. At their best, humans using AI ought to lead these knowledge-work machines toward what stakeholders speculate may be beyond the ontological teleology from their personal perspectives, since this search for meaning and universalization influences what actions people take in order to best adapt, reproduce, and energize in circular fashion. By thinking through AI's capabilities and beyond AI's limitations, humans can lead AI to improve all of these ontological factors in ways that optimize everyone's life and existence—which is what Lean philosophy teaches us to do with minimal waste, maximum value, and the highest ethical imperative.

Lean, and Leanism by extension, thus provides the linguistic and conceptual technology for leading AI in human-centered ways: recognizing that AI occupies a unique gradation of existence—powerful in processing but dependent on human wisdom for purpose; capable of generating infinite outputs but requiring human judgment to pursue true-north value; able to optimize for defined metrics but needing human guidance to serve the ontological teleology itself. This human-centered approach to AI leadership, grounded in Lean's principles of value creation with machines, represents the path toward using AI to improve human lives and existences while maintaining the irreplaceable role of human meaning-making, judgment, and the uniquely human capacity to lean toward further and better being.

AI represents a profound new gradation in this hierarchy—knowledge-work machines that can process information and generate outputs at scales previously impossible, yet cannot inherently perceive true-north value, meaning, or the ontological factors that make existence worth improving. This is precisely where Leanism, conceived as a human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing now expanded into a holistic philosophy, becomes the perfect vehicle for using and leading AI in the knowledge context. Just as Lean guided human-machine collaboration in physical production toward value creation with minimal waste, it now provides the philosophical framework for human-AI collaboration in knowledge production to impact the real world by improving human lives and existences.